Every day, users share a wealth of information about themselves with their friends and sometimes the general public via social websites such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social networking platforms and blogs. Users share how they are feeling, what they are doing, what they are thinking, experiences they've had, etc. Currently, search engines and other web-enabled applications take no advantage of the insights available by tracking the information that users are sharing.
Search engines in particular are well situated to take advantage of such insights as they are treated as trusted advisors by their users. Where a user has a question, they often turn to their search engine to provide the answer. However, as noted, conventional search engines do not use information which may be known about a user to personalize a user's search experience.